


Temporary Reassignment

by Lesetoilesfous



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mage Rights, Past Abuse, Pre-Relationship, anti chantry, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:01:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24703480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesetoilesfous/pseuds/Lesetoilesfous
Summary: A hapless farmer outside Kirkwall has triggered a five hundred year old enchantment and cursed his town into an unnatural slumber. Hawke's best lead to break the curse is one Ser Robert d'Estienne. When Ser Robert requests the use of a mage to help him break the curse's series of magical defences, Marian loans him Anders. Not that Anders gets a say in the matter.Accompanied by Aveline, Fenris and one pompous mage-hating knight, Anders is due for a very long, very bad day. He just wishes the elf would stop staring at him, and let him daydream in peace about a world in which this had never happened.
Relationships: Anders/Fenris (Dragon Age)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 201





	Temporary Reassignment

**Author's Note:**

> This was a collaborative project between me and [muirgen_lys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muirgen_lys/works), who was an alpha reader for the story. We came up with the idea and scenes and dialogue together, and then I turned it into a fic.
> 
> Please check out her work [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muirgen_lys/works), she's super talented!

“I’ll need a mage too. The catacombs are riddled with Tevinter enchantments.” Ser Robert d’Estienne is a tall, portly, red-faced man with a thinning head of hair and shrewd brown eyes. Anders had known he didn’t like the man at some point around the time he’d made a comment about blighted dog-lords when he thought Marian couldn’t hear him (she had, but she’d shaken off the comment the same way she did everything else). Still, as he stares petulantly at Hawke in the warm, opulent surroundings of his Hightown estate, Anders feels his dislike for the man growing exponentially. At the back of his head, Justice shifts. The spirit had retreated from the conversation some time previous, irritated by Ser Robert’s casual disrespect. But he knows how Anders feels about being referred to as a kind of thing, and he responds to Anders’ discomfort with an anger of his own.

For her part, Marian looks briefly confused. She frowns, and glances from Merrill, at her side, to Anders, on the other side of the room - as far away as he could politely position himself from Ser Robert without it being commented upon. She thinks, for a moment, then shrugs. “Alright. Anders, go with Ser Robert.” Anders feels his heart drop into his stomach. He tightens his hand around his staff - he’d been leaning on it to walk with - there’s a storm coming in, and the weather front is playing havoc with his knee. He doesn’t look at Hawke, or Ser Robert, or anyone else in the room, as he struggles to get his breathing and his mind back under his control. How many times had he been loaned out before, like this? She’d said it so casually. Like it was nothing. Like she hadn’t just given him away. 

Justice rifles quickly through his memories, trying to understand the cause of his distress. After a moment the spirit speaks.  _ I do not think she meant it in this way. _

Part of Anders knows this. Part of Anders agrees. It’s not the part of him that’s rearing its ugly head now, which is equal parts humiliated and betrayed. It’s not the feeling following that, of stung, simple anger at her for not taking a second to think about this or what it might mean for him. 

Blind to the small breakdown Anders is having in the corner of the room, Hawke chucks her chin at Fenris and Aveline. “Fenris, Aveline, go with them. I’ll take Merrill, Varric and Isabela. We’ll work on Plan B, in case this artefact doesn’t work out.”

Anders forces himself to look up, then. Fenris looks mildly irritated about the arrangement, but he’s never questioned Hawke in anything like this, and Anders doubts he’s going to start now. Aveline nods, calmly, as if this makes sense. Anders supposes it would. She was a veteran of the Fereldan army. She’d probably borrowed mages from the Circle before. In the middle of the room, standing in full plate armour, Ser Robert looks satisfied. Anders feels something twist in his gut. This is going to be a long, long day.

_ You could protest her decision _ , Justice points out, more curious than anything about why he isn’t. 

Anders clenches his jaw.  _ No. There are people who need us. And this is the best way to help them.  _ He looks up then. Hawke is smiling at him, though her smile falls when she sees his expression. Anders restrains a sigh, letting it out as slowly and quietly as he can with a little of the tension in his chest. By Hawke’s side, Dog whines and cocks its head.  _ I’m sure we’ll have a long, detailed conversation about it later. _

Justice simmers, discontent but in agreement with him, for now. Outside the mansion, there’s the distant call of stallholders shouting their wares in the market. Ser Robert claps his gauntleted hands, and the sound is loud and sharp. Merrill visibly jumps. Anders flinches. There’s a wicked, heavy looking longsword and a heavy shield on his back, and Anders reassures himself with the fact that both Aveline and Fenris could easily beat this man in single combat, if it came to it. He needn’t be afraid of him. (But his mind is throwing him back to other places and different times, with different people, and the clank of heavy armour ringing in his ears until it was grinding on his frayed nerves, and the heavy thump of a sword pommel on the back of his head.) 

“Well!” Ser Robert grins, and turns to Aveline. “Shall we begin?”

* * *

The mage is acting strangely. They had descended into the d’Estienne catacombs a few hours previous, following Ser Robert’s directions. According to the knight, his family’s catacombs had been haunted by Tevene magic for as long as anyone could remember - tracing back to a semi-legendary curse that had been laid upon their ancestral home by a Tevinter magister, slain by the same Ser Robert for which Robert of the present was named. 

None of this would have mattered much to any of them, except that following the unearthing of one of a lost set of twin golden statuettes, a farmer on the d’Estienne family estate had inadvertently triggered the aforementioned curse. Now he and every adult and child in the small town of Shafton, some twenty miles into the hills beyond Kirkwall’s outer limits, were trapped in a magical slumber and being subjected to the torment of any number of demons in the Fade.

The teenage daughter of one of the affected families had been just outside the town when the curse had taken effect, and had immediately travelled to Kirkwall, seeking aid for her town’s affliction. The Chantry had been unwilling to spare a mage or a templar: all were occupied with reasserting peace within the Gallows following a rash of apprentices falling to possession. So Viscount Dumar had contacted Marian, and Marian had begun her own investigation. Which brought them to Ser Robert.

According to Ser Robert, the other one of the set of statuettes was kept in his family’s vault: long since lost to history and the maze of enchantments that stood between his estate and the vault itself, directly below Shafton. If they could break the enchantments, and defeat the ensuing shades, they would be able to uncover and destroy the second statuette - effectively breaking the curse. The fact that this would also see Ser Robert’s legendary familial wealth returned to him, a man well known in Kirkwall for his atrocious gambling habit, was not one that had escaped Fenris. Judging by the looks on their faces, it had not escaped Varric or Marian either. 

But they had agreed, because there were three hundred or so innocent people in Shafton, and Hawke had a vested interest in maintaining her relationship with the Viscount. Ser Robert had insisted on a mage, which made sense - and Fenris suspected the reason he and Aveline had been sent to chaperone was more to do with whatever Plan B Hawke and her Dalish witch might come up with than it was to do with where their skills were best suited. 

Still, he  _ would _ prefer a solution that did not resort to blood magic, so he was happy enough to accompany Aveline and the mage, even if Ser Robert was a bit of an ass. He’d said nothing worse about the elvhen than Fenris was used to hearing, and seemed willing enough to trust in his skill as a warrior. Otherwise he treated Fenris as if he were invisible, which suited Fenris well enough. The sooner this mission could be completed and he could return to his own estate, the better. (Though he does wonder whether Ser Robert realises that Fenris is one of his neighbours).

It would have been a fairly straightforward, if irritating errand, and one Fenris might not have considered as particularly memorable. You couldn’t spit without landing on some ancient, half-forgotten Tevene curse in Thedas. But the mage is acting strangely.

It had started innocently enough. They’d reached the first enchantment: carved in a great pentacle on an ostentatious marble door, shivering with magic. Anders had paused, and glanced back at Ser Robert. “May I begin?”

Ser Robert had grunted and waved him on, and Anders had turned to the door. It had struck Fenris in the moment as a little odd. He’s not sure he’d ever seen Anders ask permission for anything before. But he’d written it off easily enough: Hawke tended to beat Anders to the punch, asking him or Merrill to work magic before the possibility of their asking permission might occur. Besides, Ser Robert was neither a friend nor a true ally. In all likelihood, the mage was being more careful about his use of magic in front of a stranger. It was respect and courtesy, nothing more. 

After a few minutes, Anders’ shoulders had slumped, and a heavy wave of power had washed from his hands and through the intricate engravings on the door. It had slid back into the wall with a grinding rumble, and Anders had hung his head for a moment to catch his breath. Which was when Ser Robert had stepped forward and pushed him, roughly. “Well come on man. We can’t afford to stand and wait all day.” 

Anders had stumbled forward, and Fenris had caught the way his jaw tightened, but he had said nothing. Fenris had supposed that made sense - the matter at hand  _ was _ urgent, and it wasn’t worth delaying with an argument. It was just...very unlike the mage to be conscious of that. He’d glanced at Aveline, then, but she’d seemed unperturbed, so Fenris had written it off as nothing worth worrying about.

They are three doors through the labyrinth of tunnels now, with seven remaining. Anders fishes a lyrium potion from his belt and uncorks it with his thumb, before turning to door number four. Fenris holds his sword loosely in his hands, and waits for the inevitable rise of the shades that will follow the mage’s breaking the enchantment. The door rumbles, Anders slumps, Ser Robert pushes him, and as the mage stumbles into the next room, a sextet of shades rises from the clean white marble like a nightmare, stinking of sulphur and metallic ash. Together, they dispatch the creatures, in a cacophony of echoing screeches and clanging metal. Fenris is halfway to slinging his sword back over his back when Ser Robert marches over to Anders and cuffs him, lightly, on the back of the head. Fenris frowns.

“Surely you can do something about these blighted shades, boy.” Ser Robert doesn’t sound angry so much as he does exasperated, as if he is chastising a child or a subordinate. Fenris waits for anger or humour, or, as is so often the case with this particular apostate, both. But Anders narrows his eyes at the greasy ash smeared on the marble and bites the inside of his cheek, ducking his head.

“I’m afraid not, messere. The shades are part of the spell, so we cannot break it without -”

“Fine, fine, I don’t need chapter and verse.” Ser Robert interrupts, speaking loudly over the top of Anders, who falls silent immediately - though Fenris notices the way his narrow jaw clenches as he does so. Ser Robert glances back at Aveline. “I tell you, guardswoman, they don’t make mages like they used to.” Aveline gives the man a very small, tight, smile and makes a soft sound that Fenris thinks is neither agreement nor disagreement. Anders ignores all of them, and continues down the long tunnel to the next set of doors, lit on either side by strips of clear glowing stone. After a moment, Fenris follows him.

As Anders gets to the next set of doors, he uncorks another lyrium potion and drinks it in one long gulp. Fenris frowns. He knows enough of magic to know how toxic lyrium could become in such quantities. “Do you need to rest, mage?”

Anders scowls, already shutting his eyes and laying his palms on the great stone doors. “Why don’t you ask Ser Robert?” There is, at least, a little of the mage’s usual irreverence in his voice as he says the name, and Fenris takes that as reassurance enough that all is well. Ser Robert is a difficult man but not an impossible one, and if Anders is well enough to dislike him then he is well enough to decide how he behaves without Fenris’ input. It is likely that he is treating the knight as no more than a difficult patient - someone with whom to comply for now in order to have him behave. It’s a performance. Nothing more.

Fenris steps back as Anders’ magic washes over the stone in a flash of blue light that pulls, tingling, on the tattoos burning over his body. His bare foot slides back on the smooth, warm polished stone of the marble beneath his feet as he prepares for the next attack. The door slides open with a high grinding stone rumble, and together they dispatch the shades. In their absence, Fenris feels the sudden rush of fresh air over his face, and notices the way Anders tips his head back and shuts his eyes at the sensation. The mage’s face is red with exertion, and sweat is dripping down his temples. His hair has come a little loose of its tie in the commotion. The moment is almost pleasant: but then Ser Robert strides between them, shouldering Fenris aside in a way which is all too familiar before grabbing Anders’ elbow and tugging him up the tunnel. Fenris sees the way Anders flinches at the hand on his arm: and more strangely still, the way he goes limp and allows himself to be tugged when he sees who the hand belongs to.

Something sour rolls in the bottom of Fenris’ gut.

Ser Robert is speaking, snapping at Anders as he marches up through the tunnel, where the marble sinks into a set of steps leading to the earth. “Come along mage. You have a job to do.”

Fenris glances back at Aveline then, expecting her to have some kind of reaction to Ser Robert’s treatment. But Aveline gives him an awkward, polite smile and breaks his gaze, following them. For a moment, Fenris stands on the ash-smeared marble floor of the d’Estienne family crypt, watching Ser Robert and the mage, wondering why it is he feels so uncomfortable and thinking with a terrible kind of dread that he already knows. Then he swings his sword back over his back, and steps onto the loose crumbling earth.

* * *

Anders is having a bad day. Ser Robert is not the worst noble he’s ever worked for, but he is irritating, and Anders had really thought he’d left this nonsense behind when he’d escaped from the blighted Circle, become a Grey Warden, and saved Vigil’s Keep from an army of darkspawn. “What does a man have to do for some dignity around here?” He mutters, running his fingers over the moss covered stone of an ancient marble arch, feeling the magic tingling beneath its surface.

Ser Robert looks at him, sharply. “Is there something that you wish to say, mage?”

Anders ducks his head, hunching his shoulders with the uncomfortable familiarity of habit. “No, no messere, it’s nothing.” It’s not like he means it. It’s just easier this way. Anders had learned the hard way that there was no point arguing with a noble for every little sentiment of disrespect. It’d only earn you a bruised ego and a broken wrist. Better to just get on with it and spit at the idiot later. Anders indulges the fantasy as he works, imagining setting fire to Ser Robert’s generous beard.

Ser Robert, meanwhile, watches him for a long moment before grunting and getting out his canteen, drinking heavily. Anders, with Justice’s help, finds the seam in the spell at last, and shuts his eyes as he reaches into the stone and pulls at it. Arcanum was always so fidgety - he much preferred the simple passions of elemental magic to the abstract problem solving of the arcane. Concentrating, and feeling his muscles shaking with the effort of it, Anders says sharply, “Brace yourselves!” Then he pulls on the magic: bright blue as a tense steel wire, until he can feel his own mana burning and his body trembling with the force of it. Justice washes over his limbs, white-hot and invigorating, and with one last great tug the string snaps, and the web collapses.

Releasing an arcane horror and seven shades. Anders stumbles back from the pillar, and has a moment to spit a handful of swear words in Tevene, Orlesian and the trade tongue before he’s hit with a fireball. Justice manages to pull up a shield for them before they’re incinerated entirely, but Anders still finds himself on his back, fingers and cheeks burning where the fire had caught them like the sun on a hot day. Anders glares at his fingers, bubbling with burns, and tries to shake away the pain. It doesn’t do much more than make them throb, angrily. Anders pushes himself to his feet and ignores the blistering agony of it, throwing a cone of frost to immobilise a host of shades descending on Fenris, and relishing the cold of it on his aching hands. The shades freeze, and Fenris wastes no time dismembering them whilst Aveline and Ser Robert chip away at the horror.

Anders can already feel his mana reserves protesting, but he can still taste lyrium on his tongue, and his stomach rolls at the idea of ingesting more of the stuff. He thinks, fast, and throws a half-hearted spirit bolt at the creature over Ser Robert’s head. The man shouts in surprise, glaring back at Anders, and Anders ignores him. A few feet away from him, having dealt with the shades, Fenris roars as he burns blue-white and throws himself at the horror. Aveline steps back to let him through, and Fenris lets his greatsword fall like an axe into the horror’s midriff. The thing crumples like wet paper, and as it does Fenris’ tattoos pulse then flash, engulfing the creature in a wave of blue-white light that incinerates it as it screams. Fenris’ tattoos fade, and Anders blinks the light away from behind his eyelids, turning first to Aveline. 

“Anyone need healing?”

“Me, mage. Now.” Ser Robert clicks his fingers, moving to sit heavily on a tussock of grass. Anders resists the urge to roll his eyes, and wanders over, ignoring the searing heat of the burns on his fingers and cheeks as he does. Ser Robert apparently notices his lack of urgency, because he clicks his fingers again, impatiently. Fenris’ head snaps up, and Anders feels his face burning for a reason other than his injuries as he increases his pace. “Well come on man, I’m injured.”

Anders gets to the knight and looks him over for any obvious injuries. When nothing presents itself, he clears his throat and asks as politely as he can, “where is it that you are hurt, messere?”

Ser Robert stares at him. “Are you blind?” He lifts one hand and pushes back his thick, curly brown hair to reveal a thin dribble of blood on his temple. Then he looks back at Anders, solemn and stern. “I may have a concussion.”

Anders fights the urge to laugh, and looks down at his own hands, letting his mana finally, finally ease the blistering pain in his own fingers. Ser Robert interrupts him. “What are you doing?” Anders startles, and hates the fact he does so. Fenris and Aveline, behind them, busy themselves with searching the shades and the horror for anything they can use or sell. Around them, the trees of the thin wood into which they’d emerged creak and rustle in a light wind. 

Anders raises his hands, still red and bubbling with burns. “I’m just healing my hands, messere, so that I can treat you.”

Ser Robert scowls. “Can’t that wait? I’m bleeding out.” 

Reluctantly, Anders lets his magic fade, biting back every response he’d like to give to that (starting with  _ yes, and I’m Divine Justinia _ ). Instead he nods. “Very well, messere.” Anders raises his hand to Ser Robert’s forehead, not quite touching him as he carefully knits back together what is, as he’d suspected, an entirely superficial wound. His fingers sting as he does so. When he’s done, he steps back, and ducks his head again. Anders wishes the gesture didn’t make him feel so ashamed. It’s just for a day. It’ll be over soon. “If that’s all, Ser Robert?” He asks, politely. His aching fingers hang curled gingerly at his side.

The man in question thrusts out an armour-clad arm. Anders stares at it. Ser Robert scowls. “I’m bruised. Come on, get to it.”

Anders clenches his jaw tightly enough to make his teeth ache, and steps forward. “Of course, messere.”

* * *

The mage is definitely acting strangely. Fenris watches as he painstakingly heals even the slightest of Ser Robert’s bruises whilst he and Aveline wait nearby, taking the opportunity to rest and drink from their canteens. 

There had been days on the Wounded Coast when Anders had not dealt with such superficial wounds for hours, despite Hawke and Varric’s good natured whingeing about their blisters. He’d explained then, though he hadn’t needed to, that it was necessary for him to conserve his mana in case one of them were to find themselves in need of real healing. All of them had known the truth of it, so none of them had pushed the point. Fenris wasn’t sure that he trusted the mage, exactly, but he trusted his competence as a healer. If Anders thought that an injury did not require urgent treatment, Fenris believed that it didn’t. 

So it was odd, now, to see him wasting time on something that was so clearly an unnecessary expenditure of his mana. And unsettling, to see him do so when his hands and cheeks are so clearly and painfully burned.

Finally, Ser Robert is satisfied, and Anders steps away from them to spare a little glittering blue mana at last for his own injuries. But Ser Robert gets to his feet with a clamour of plate, startling a bird from a tree above them and making Anders flinch. “Shall we continue?” He directs the question to Aveline, but Fenris answers him, noticing the tension in Anders’ shoulders, even with his back turned to them.

“Anders needs to heal himself. We can wait a while longer.” He forces himself to meet Ser Robert’s eyes then, despite the younger echo of the slave in him that tells him not to dare. Fenris ignores it, and lifts his chin. He is a better warrior than Ser Robert, and the man is outnumbered by Fenris and his allies. Both of them know it. The man in question reddens, opening his mouth to protest, but it’s at this point that Aveline puts a hand on his arm and gently, firmly, turns him away. 

“Perhaps you could tell me a little more about what you remember of this curse, Ser Robert?” She says it with the same smooth tone Fenris has heard her use a dozen times and more to de-escalate squabbles in Lowtown. Ser Robert turns away. Fenris finds that he is almost disappointed.

They continue on. It’s a warm day, and it gets hotter as they go. Anders is walking stiffly: he favours one knee over the other, something Fenris has noticed before on their trips to the Wounded Coast and Sundermount. It’s clearly troubling him now, and he uses his staff as a walking stick, leaning on it heavily as they continue along the invisible path above ground, following the locked off catacombs below their feet. Fenris watches the mage carefully as they go. He is sweating, and there’s a slight tremor in his hands. Breaking the first five enchantments had clearly been a substantial drain for him, and Fenris could not imagine their ensuing battles or Ser Robert’s demand for healing had made it any easier.

But it’s not that which troubles Fenris. It is instead the familiarity of his posture. It’s the way that he isn’t talking. The mage was normally abrasively talkative. If he wasn’t throwing his campaign to end the alleged plight of the mages at anyone who would listen to him and many more who wouldn’t, he was filling the air with a string of observations and crass attempts at humour that Fenris found uniquely wearing on the best of days. But today he’s silent, lips pursed tightly shut, eyes fixed on the ground ahead of him, shoulders hunched. Fenris knows that posture. He’s worn it himself often enough. He finds himself straightening his back in response and lifting his chin, reminding himself of his freedom even as the mage so visibly surrenders his.

It’s not only that, either. It’s the way Anders is around Ser Robert - the way he ducks and bows his head. The way he doesn’t meet the man’s eyes. The way he keeps asking for permission, and apologising, and agreeing - even when the knight says something that is at best incorrect and at worst insulting. 

Fenris had seen Anders snap, good-naturedly or not, at even the slightest of perceived insults against him and his kind. Ser Robert interrupts his one-sided conversation with an increasingly tense looking Aveline to call ahead to Anders, “Mages have to be trained in how to say the Chant of Light, don’t they? The corruption on their tongues makes it harder for them to say.” 

Anders replies, mildly, “Yes, Ser Robert.” Fenris stares at him. The superstition was both common and a cruel one, which even Fenris knew to be untrue. It’s hard to believe that he just heard Anders agreeing with such nonsense. 

Admittedly, the mage looks distracted - frowning at the sandy, gravel-strewn dirt beneath his feet, no doubt following the lines of the old enchantments. If he were a slave, he’d have been beaten more than once for such obvious inattentiveness. But it’s not the behaviour of a free man, either. And Ser Robert seems satisfied, whilst Aveline seems only mildly irritated at having to humour the man’s self-congratulatory attempts at conversation - as if he isn’t abusing one of their companions with the casual contempt of authority. 

Then there’s the touching. There’s clearly no intimate meaning behind it: but there is a casual violence in the way Ser Robert shoves and cuffs Anders, and the way Anders allows it, that speaks to an uneasy kind of truth Fenris recognises all too well. Ser Robert treats Anders as little more than a child or a beast, shoving him and guiding him and smacking him lightly when he doesn’t move fast enough or get out of the way. 

Fenris knows Anders is a tactile person, inclined to engaging in long subtle conversations of touch with their companions - especially Hawke and Isabela. But he’s never seen the mage willingly subject himself to such rough treatment, and he doesn’t like what it says about him that he does so now without complaint. As if he’s done it before. As if he’s used to it. As if this is normal. 

They reach the sixth gate and dispatch the creatures there without much fanfare. They can see Shafton now, in the distance, a small chocolate box of dark wooden houses, crammed beneath a shimmering veil of magical light. Anders is leaning heavily on his staff, panting. Aveline stands against the hill at her back as she drinks from her flask, and Ser Robert sits down on a small mound. Fenris tugs a promising looking amulet from the corpse of the horror, feeling the faint throb of the thing in his hand and tasting the sulfur of the spirit on his tongue as he stands. He’s wondering whether he ought to say something to the mage when Anders limps over to Ser Robert.

“Messere, may I sit down for a moment? I need to rest.”

Ser Robert stares at him as if this is not only something which requires his permission, but as if it is the height of insolence that Anders has dared to ask at all. “No.” He says, once, contemptuously. Anders bites back a small sigh that would have had him flogged in Tevinter and limps to the side of the path opposite Aveline, leaning against the grassy bank and attempting to shift his weight away from his knee.

Fenris stares. Aveline looks uncomfortable, at least. But she doesn’t say anything. Anders is busy pulling an elfroot potion from his belt, fingers shaking a little as he does so. It doesn’t look like either of them plan to do anything else. 

Fenris had never thought he’d see Anders obeying anyone. He feels none of the vindication he had once thought he might, if the mage had ever found himself in a position of humiliation like that which Fenris and so many other elvhen had been forced to endure. Instead, Fenris feels an uncomfortable, dawning realisation that perhaps Anders had already borne such indignities, and that, like Fenris, his anger came in part from his unwillingness to bear them again. 

He crosses the space between them quickly, breathing in a breeze that smells sweetly of hay as he does so, and ushers Anders towards a mound of grass on the other side of the bank between which he and Aveline are standing. “Sit, mage. You are in no state to stand.” Anders stares at him, then, light brown eyes offering nothing more or less than confusion. Fenris thinks he knows exactly what that confusion feels like, and feels a stab of irritation at the knight beside them.

(He’s standing on a humid, sandy beach.  _ Are you going to hurt me, domine? _

The woman before him is tall, and strong, and beautiful, with smooth pale grey skin. She smiles, and it’s a gentle thing.  _ I am not your master, stranger. And no, I do not wish to hurt you. _ )

Anders allows himself to be led, and Fenris ignores his own discomfort at that, and the way it rises when Anders bends stiffly and awkwardly to sit, leaning heavily on his staff as he does so. Hesitant, Fenris moves forward to catch his elbow, and Anders waves him away with a shadow of his usual impatience. “It’s fine.” Then he catches himself, and looks up, and gives Fenris a small honest smile that creases the freckled skin around the corners of his eyes. “Thank you, Fenris.” Gingerly, Anders stretches out his bad knee, lifting his breeches to reveal a thick white bandage wrapped around the joint. He bends, and winces as he begins to carefully massage it. Over their heads, a bird calls into the wide blue sky. 

“I did not tell you that you could sit, mage.” Ser Robert calls from further up the path, face red. Anders stiffens. Fenris steps carefully, deliberately, between Ser Robert’s line of sight and Anders, shielding him with his body. He meets Ser Robert’s eyes.

“No. I did.” Fenris keeps his head held high, despite the part of him that’s telling him to let it go and apologise now whilst he still has a chance of forgiveness. He does not want or need the favour of a man like this, no matter how high his birth. Fenris is a free man. He will not tolerate cruelty. 

After a moment, Ser Robert breaks his gaze, muttering “blighted upstart knife-ear” under his breath and spitting into the grass. But he doesn’t push the subject. Fenris feels a faint bloom of something like satisfaction curling through his chest. The feeling settles and spreads into something gentler when he sees the way Anders’ shoulders lower, just a little, out of the corner of his eye. 

* * *

Now that he’s realised what’s going on: namely that Ser Robert is treating Anders as a glorified slave, and that this is not an unusual treatment for mages by nobility in the Free Marches, Fenris finds himself settling more easily into his role as Anders’ self-appointed protector. 

Ser Robert seems willing to grant him a marginally higher status than Anders, for his skill as a warrior, though Fenris catches him growling to Aveline about his thoughts on whether elves ought to be allowed to openly carry weapons - since clearly the privilege went straight to their empty heads and gave them delusions of grandeur. Fenris doesn’t let it bother him: he’s heard far worse, and for all Ser Robert’s venom, it’s clear that Fenris’ status in their party is materially equal to his. 

Fenris is more than a match for Ser Robert as a warrior, and Aveline is his ally first, despite her and the knight’s shared humanity. Fenris trusts that Aveline would never turn on him in the way another human may. It makes him bold. There’s a catharsis in challenging Ser Robert and his treatment of Anders - protecting him in a way that a younger Fenris could not possibly have conceived of, let alone wished for. Judging by the surprise and confusion on Anders’ face, the mage had never had cause to hope for such kindness either. 

They break the seventh enchantment, and the sun climbs over the apex of the sky, burning even hotter than it had before. The heat is getting to all of them: Fenris can see the way Anders scowls when Ser Robert isn’t looking, and catches more than once Aveline’s slight frown at both Anders’ and Ser Robert’s backs. She’s clearly unhappy about something - but since she’s not currently being treated with anything less than decent respect, Fenris decides to question her about it later. 

Ser Robert gets out his flask, and shakes it over his mouth, scowling when he realises that it’s empty. “In the name of the blighted Maker. Mage.” Ser Robert thrusts out his hand and Anders freezes, staring at him with an expression that is perfectly neutral for a moment before slowly, reluctantly unhooking his flask from his belt and tossing it to Ser Robert. Fenris stares. 

Ser Robert takes a gulp of Anders’ water, and spits it onto the rocky ground. The sun beats down over their heads. “It’s hot. Cool it for me.” He holds out the flask. Around them, crickets chirp in the long grass. Fenris can feel his heart pounding in his chest, feel anger rising hot and burning and vicious up his back. 

Anders looks at Ser Robert. He’s filthy, and sweat is trickling down his temples. His hair is pulled out of his face and off the back of his neck in a full ponytail for once, and his fair, freckled skin is smeared with dried blood and ash. Fenris thinks he can see a hint of disdain in his light brown eyes as he looks at the knight in front of him. But he bites back a short sigh, and gestures impatiently with his fingers, and blue light flashes over the flask. Fenris feels the sudden cold in the air, and it’d be a blessed relief on his baking skin if he didn’t know the reason for it. 

Ser Robert grunts, satisfied, and doesn’t bother to thank the mage. (You don’t thank slaves.) He promptly finishes Anders’ canteen. Water dribbles over his beard. Fenris can hear his heart pounding in his ears. The tattoos on his body burn, cold and aching. Aveline looks away. 

When he’s done, Ser Robert tosses the flask back to Anders, who catches it and, slowly, upends it. Nothing comes out. Anders’ mouth twists, and he ties the canteen back onto his belt, turning and walking away. His feet crunch in the gravel in an uneven rhythm as he limps, accompanied by the staccato tap of his staff. Ser Robert ignores Fenris entirely, looking instead to Aveline. “Shall we?”

Aveline doesn’t answer him. She marches on, past him, following Anders. After a moment, Fenris does too, not bothering to give the knight a second glance. They walk in silence for a while longer - the buildings of Shafton shimmering under their iridescent bubble in the distance.

Fenris swats an insect tickling against the back of his neck, and notices the way Anders’ long fingers fall to the flask at his belt, curling for a moment before falling away. The long line of his stubble-grazed throat moves as he swallows, and he works his jaw. Fenris steps forward without thinking, removing his flask from his belt and thrusting it into the space between them.

Anders turns to him, eyebrows arched in surprise, but he takes the flask. Their fingers brush as he does so, and he offers Fenris a small, thin curve of a smile before he takes a quick gulp of his water. He dries his mouth with the back of his hand, and goes to return the thing. The smell of wet leather is rich in the air between them. Fenris shakes his head, trying not to be distracted by the way Anders wets his pink, chapped lips (had he found the mage attractive before?) 

“Take as much as you need.” He cannot resist the urge, then, to glare back at Ser Robert as he adds, “there’s enough to go around.”

Anders huffs a quiet laugh, but Fenris notices the way his brown eyes shift away from him, hiding whatever expression there might have been there as he stares at the fields. Fenris is surprised he hadn’t noticed before, but in the sunlight, Anders’ eyes are almost gold.

*

“Hurry up, mage!” The sun is lower in the sky now, and the day is cooler for it. They have reached the eighth gate: a tall white marble arch over which thick, rich vines have grown dark and green. Magic shimmers between the stone, stretched like gossamer fabric across the empty space there. Ser Robert is standing over Anders as he works, brow furrowed, hands shaking. Fenris stands on his other side, and when Ser Robert lifts his hand to cuff the back of Anders’ head, Fenris catches it. Between them, Anders stiffens, and Fenris feels the shiver and dissipation of power as he releases the spell he’d been working.

Fenris tightens his hand around Ser Robert’s wrist. “Do not touch him.” He says, low and warning. Ser Robert goes from red to puce, and yanks his hand from Fenris’ grip.

“I will not tolerate such disrespect from an elf, of all creatures.” He moves his hand to the hilt of his sword. Fenris draws his weapon, feeling the pulsing flare of his tattoos as he does so. They feel blistered and bruised after a day of steady combat, but he has no doubt that he could defeat Ser Robert easily all the same. The knight in question draws his sword. “I will treat my mage however I see fit.”

Fenris sees red. “He is not  _ your _ mage. He is a free man and you will respect him as such.”

Ser Robert scoffs. “The only free mage is an apostate. This man is a servant of the Circle and the Chantry, Serah Hawke and, currently, me.” Ser Robert lifts his bearded chin then, barrel-chest swelling with his pride. “If you will not listen to reason, elf, then I will make you understand by force.”

He raises his sword. The blade flashes in the sun. Fenris pushes his foot back through the dirt, ready to leap. Anders says, “Fenris, wait!”

There’s a ringing clang of metal on metal. All of them freeze. Ser Robert’s sword is trapped in the air, held up by a beautiful blue-white blade. Ser Robert sputters. “Guard Captain?”

Aveline looks at him coolly, mouth set into a firm, thin line. “I think that all of us should step back and let Anders work. Don’t you, Ser Robert?”

Ser Robert looks from Aveline, who stands as tall as he does in better armour, to Fenris. Fenris makes no effort to hide the murder in his eyes as he adjusts his grip on the greatsword in his hands. Then Ser Robert steps back, and sheaths his sword. “Excellent.” Aveline’s tone is icy. “Shall we.” It’s not a request, and Ser Robert steps back and away. Fenris does not sheath his sword. 

A long, slender hand lightly touches his arm, deftly avoiding the lines of his lyrium. Fenris stiffens anyway, looking up even as Anders draws his hand back. Anders gives him a small, somewhat exasperated smile. “Fenris, it’s fine.” The town of Shafton is only a few miles off now, and the fields around them are strangely quiet, save for the hush of the wind in the grass. Magic shimmers over the town like a mirage.

Fenris frowns. “It is not fine. He is treating you like a, like a -” Like a servant. Like a dog. Like a slave.

“Like a mage?” Anders cocks an eyebrow, and gives him a sarcastic grin. “Can’t imagine why.” He wiggles his fingers then, and grins, and it’s sharp and crooked and a little bitter. Fenris doesn’t miss the brief flash of anger in his brown eyes. Then the smile falls away, and Anders’ brow pulls his forehead into a mess of creases as he glances worriedly over at where Ser Robert is raising his voice as he speaks with Aveline. “Seriously, it’s fine. I’ve dealt with a lot worse than this from noble pricks who needed to borrow a Circle mage.”

Fenris tries to quell the sudden sharp stab of alarm that rises in him at the idea of Anders being treated worse than this, and tolerating it. Instead he shifts, uncomfortable, trying to ease the pressure of the lyrium squeezing his aching calf with his heel. “It is...very strange, to see you like this.”

Anders’ lips quirk. “What, the polite Circle mage?” He sighs. “It’s not my best look. But I’m not doing it for him.” He gestures, sharply, at the not so distant town. “Those people have been trapped in the Fade for nearly two days.” The curve of Anders’ sharp jaw tightens. “I don’t even want to think about what the demons might be doing to them in there. So I’m going to suck it up, and so are you, and we’re going to get the blighted thing over with. Alright?” There’s a little nervousness in his voice as he asks the question - as if he thinks Fenris has any intention of making this situation any more difficult for him than it already has been. 

He looks back at Ser Robert. The man is glaring at the pair of them now, but he is, at least, not shouting any more. And Aveline is scowling at him in turn. Fenris knows that she would never let him actually hurt Anders. He sighs, and swings his sword over his back, feeling the reassuring weight of it as he does so. He curls and flexes his fingers, feeling the elastic tension of the lyrium around his hands burning as he does so. “Very well.”

Anders’ expression eases, then, and he gives him an honest, handsome smile. “Thanks, Fenris.”

Fenris nods, and looks away as he feels blood rushing up the back of his neck and to the tips of his ears. The breeze rushes cool and kissing and welcome after the heat of the day over the fields. “It is nothing.” When he finds the courage to look back, Anders has already turned away.

* * *

Anders is seriously considering retirement from adventuring. For one thing, he really doesn’t need any more fodder for his nightmares. With the fun Grey Warden dreams about darkspawn and broodmothers, (and the constant dread that one day he’ll fall asleep and hear the call of another archdemon), and an upbringing in the Circle to work from, he has more than enough to work from already. For another, adventuring for Hawke and running a free clinic in the Undercity is more than enough work for three people, let alone one, even if that one does happen to be hosting a spirit from the Fade.

“Can you not work any faster, mage?” 

Yes, Anders decides. Adventuring is overrated. 

Frowning, he pulls his focus away from the intricate web of light buried beneath the stone under his hands. “I’m afraid not, messere. This is quite a complicated enchantment,” which is why it hasn’t been broken in centuries, “and I have already broken another eight,” a feat which is in itself remarkable, not that anyone’s noticed. “If I move any faster, I risk jeopardising all of the work that we have already done,” and there is no way in the Maker’s golden city that he is risking even the slightest chance of doing this all over again. 

Anders feels rather than sees the movement of Ser Robert’s hand. It’s a sudden shift of fabric and huff of air that he has heard a thousand times in a hundred places, and he feels his face flush as adrenaline shoots through his veins and his muscles tense. He opens his eyes in time to see Ser Robert swinging the back of his gauntleted hand at him, expression almost calm. Anders flinches, but his arms don’t finish their journey to protect his head. It’s better to just let this happen, in his experience. If they believed you cowed, they’d finish sooner. Best not to prolong it.

Ser Robert hits him hard, and Anders feels the bruising ache of it through his cheekbone and the quick, sharp splitting of his skin under the man’s gauntlet. He lifts his hand to hit him again, and Anders grits his teeth and stands hunched, arms tucked tightly and awkwardly bent at his sides. 

Anders hears the whistle of air, and flinches, and regrets it. (A lot of them hated it when you flinched, and would hit you harder for it, claiming it would teach you courage. Anders had always thought that was an especially backwards kind of logic.)

The blow doesn’t land. Anders looks up, hunched as he’d braced for the next blow, to see Fenris standing between him and Ser Robert, shimmering with lyrium. Fenris has caught Ser Robert’s wrist in his hand, and his green eyes are blazing with a murderous kind of fury that Anders has only ever seen in him before the imminent extrication of hearts. 

Anders breathes, and feels his heart suddenly racing in his chest as the numbness that had enveloped him at Ser Robert’s near beating recedes. Blood suddenly rushes into his cheeks, and he feels his breath coming sharp and high and shallow in his chest. Desperately, Anders tries to stave off the rising wave of panic threatening to overwhelm him in the absence of his comforting blanket of detachment (and training, an angry part of him murmurs, hating the subservient position in which he’s found himself standing - in which he has stood too many times before.)

When Fenris speaks, his voice is deep and rough with anger. “This man is doing you a favour. I will not stand by as you mistreat him for it. Raise your hand to him again, and I will remove it.”

Anders stares. The sky above them has begun to burn gold and pink now with the growing light of evening. Standing against it, tattoos burning bright as starlight, skin dark and handsome, Fenris looks like some mythic hero. Or a charming prince from a fairytale, with his fine jaw and the sleek, elegant muscle of his limbs. Anders thinks about being fourteen, and imagining some handsome saviour sweeping in to save him from his abusers. He sort of thought he’d grown out of that kind of thing. He’d certainly never thought it would actually happen. He could not have dreamed that it would be Fenris, of all people, doing the saving.

Despite the situation: his aching cheek, and the dark tainted magic at his back, and the cursed village mere miles away, Anders feels his heart skip a beat in his chest for an entirely ordinary reason. 

Ser Robert looks at Fenris, and Fenris’ hand tightens around his wrist with a crunch of steel, spilling white light. Anders catches a look of real fear on the man’s face then, just before he steps back and yanks his wrist away, massaging it gingerly, stalking over to complain to Aveline - who he has clearly told himself is their chaperone. Fenris turns to him, white hair drifting in the light wind, letting the light of his tattoos die as he gently catches Anders’ chin with the crook of his finger and thumb, tilting his head so he can get a better look at his bruise.

“Are you well, mage?” Fenris’ voice is soft, and Anders tries to ignore what that does to something fluttering and hormonal in his chest, even as he feels himself blush. He lifts his hand to Fenris’ and tries to give him a nervous smile. 

“It’s fine. Really.” He swallows against the sudden lump in his throat. Fenris lowers his hand, though his expression is doubtful, and concern is tight around the corners of his eyes. Even his eyelashes are white, Anders notices, with something like surprise. He clears his throat, trying to dislodge such thoughts with it as he ducks his head. “Thank you, for that.” Anders rubs the back of his neck, as if that will ease away the heat there. His palms are sweating. “I appreciate it. Really.” He can’t stop staring at the gravel around his toes.

Fenris catches his chin again, very gently. The metal of his gauntlet is cool against Anders’ chin. As soon as Anders looks up, he lets go. There is something warm and solemn in his green eyes when he says, softly, “I would not have you bow your head to me.”

Anders wants to joke. He wants to raise his eyebrows, and tease him about Varric’s romances and one-liners. But he feels something lurch in his chest, and he thinks Fenris probably knows what it’s like to keep his head down and his gaze low. That he probably knows how humiliating it can be. How it can make you feel like less than a person. Anders tries to smile, and ignore the sudden sadness stinging behind his eyes. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” His voice shakes as he speaks, which sort of undermines his half hearted attempt to be blithe about it. Fenris nods, once, and doesn’t smile, stepping back and away from him. Anders barely resists the urge to stop him.

“Are you able to continue?” There’s no demand in the question. No challenge. Fenris is asking him, honestly. He can say no. 

Anders turns to the tall, beautiful arch, and the shimmering magic spread between its pillars like gossamer fabric. He sets his shoulders and cracks his knuckles. “Break a five hundred year old enchantment? Sure. Easy. I eat Tevene charms for breakfast.”

Fenris snorts a soft, graceless laugh that pulls at something childish and yearning in Anders’ chest. He steps back a little, standing carefully between Anders and Ser Robert. Anders lets himself feel the comfort that brings him as he returns his attention to the pillar, laying his hands on the cool, ridged stone. He’s safe. No harm will come to him here.

He reaches into the web.

* * *

It’s empty.

They had, at last, finally, reached the final enchantment. They had fought three arcane horrors, and both Fenris and Aveline had nearly fallen. Ser Robert had a broken arm, about which he would not shut up. An intricate, golden chest had been pushed up out of the earth on a marble plinth in the centre of Shafton, among its supernaturally sleeping residents. It had opened with a soft, hollow snick of metal. And it was empty. 

Anders stares at the chest, and feels an entirely human anger roaring in his ears. The wind whips at his hair and clothes. Overhead, the sky has darkened with the coming night and the storm, which has reached them at last. It has not yet broken, but it is imminent. Around them in the town square, the horrors stink of ash and sulfur, tattered old robes spreading purple and red over the dusty stone like spilled wine. By the buildings, by their stalls, on street corners and front porches, the people of Shafton grimace in troubled, unnatural slumber. 

It had all been for nothing.

Anders wants to be sick. 

“Well?” Ser Robert snaps, raising his voice over the howling wind. Anders feels magic prickling through his limbs, eagerly responding to his rising temper. He feels Justice shift at the back of his head. 

He raises his voice too. “It’s empty.” He sees the understanding on Fenris’ face - recognition, and understanding of a shadow of the anger and humiliation he’s feeling. On the other side of the square, Aveline frowns at the sleeping townsfolk. 

“Now what?”

Above them, the storm clouds are rolling and black. It starts to rain. The shimmering net of magical light over their heads glitters as the first fat drops of rainwater fall from the sky. Water sinks heavy and cold into Anders’ hair. He’s exhausted. His knee has been throbbing with steadily increasing pain all day. His mana is scraped to its limit, and his mouth tastes like lyrium. His throat is sore with the sheer number of potions he’s drunk today. His body feels scraped out and thin. 

He’s so angry. 

“You’re wrong.” Ser Robert says, almost mild in his certainty. He pushes Anders out of the way, roughly, and Anders lets him, watching with a grim kind of satisfaction as the knight takes in the absence of his family’s legendary fortune. 

“Someone else must have got here first.” He calls, over the storm. Anders can feel Fenris watching them both, carefully. He knows he’ll help, if he needs him to. He hadn’t known that before.

Ser Robert whirls on him, then. “You’re lying.” Spit flies as he shouts, face red with a life of drink and his current temper. “You’re a mage, that’s what you do, you lie! You lie and cheat and poison everything you -”

Anders breaks his nose. Ser Robert reels back, one hand flying to his face as he stares at Anders, mouth open, blood dripping into his beard. Anders looks down at his aching knuckles, coolly and flexes his hand. “Ouch.” Then he lifts his hand and punches him again. 

Ser Robert turns to Aveline. “Well help me, damn you! He’s clearly gone insane!”

Aveline folds her arms. Anders feels a rush of vicious exhilaration, and then he punches Ser Robert again, fist making satisfying contact with his cheek. He follows up the blow with an uppercut to the man’s chin, and hefts his staff, shoving him hard in the centre of his chest when the man loses his balance, with a sound like ringing a heavy bell. Ser Robert falls back onto his arse, and Anders tosses and catches his staff, breathless with anger as he towers over him. Above his head, the sky thunders. “I am  _ not  _ your servant.” 

Anders adjusts his grip on his staff then, calling on the last of his mana. At the side of the square, Anders catches Aveline unfold her arms from the corner of his eye. He sees Fenris stop her. On the ground, Ser Robert lifts his arms over his head, voice high and petulant in his panic, “No! Please! Mercy!” Lightning flashes over their heads, and the rain falls harder. 

Anders gathers power until it’s blinding, pouring every slight and irritation and indignity and outright pain he has been forced to bear today. Then he lets it go. 

Ser Robert screams.

A fireball crashes into the damp stone of the courtyard beside his head with a roar, turning the rainwater on the pavement into steam and singeing the bush of Ser Robert’s curly brown hair. As the light fades, Anders bends down, damp hair falling around his face, breathing heavily. Ser Robert cowers away from him. Anders knows how that feels. When he speaks, he does so with a very quiet kind of fury. “ _ Never _ taunt a mage.” Then he spits at the ground beside Ser Robert’s head, and straightens, and turns to walk away.

Ser Robert’s voice is thin with fear when he speaks, shouting over the growing storm. “I’ll have your head for this, mage! I am a close confidante of Grand Cleric Elthina. You’ll be Tranquil by dawn, do you hear me?”

There was a time when those words would have been enough to freeze him in place. There was a time when he would have done anything to please anyone who held that kind of power over him. There was a time when he had done it. 

Anders turns, spins his staff, and knocks Ser Robert unconscious with the butt of it. The man slumps against the stone. Anders walks away.

Aveline looks at him, and then at Ser Robert’s body, “Is he -?”

Anders shakes his head, biting hard on the inside of his cheek to resist unleashing what anger he has left over at her. It wasn’t her fault. He knows that. He does. “He’s just unconscious.”

“It is better than he deserves.” Fenris says, grimly. Lightning flashes over the rooftops of Shafton. The web of magic above their heads shivers. 

Aveline looks around at the townsfolk. Her hair is dark and red for the rain, instead of its usual copper. “So. Now what?”

Anders frowns at the small body of a child, curled awkwardly over a young looking mabari hound. “We should get them inside. Breaking the spell won’t mean much if they all die of pneumonia in a week.”

Fenris nods, “Very well.” He’s smiling at him. Over their heads, thunder shivers through the blackened sky. 

Anders raises an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“It is good to see you acting more like yourself.”

Anders snorts, and feels the laughter burn away a little more of his residual anger, even as he moves to a grocery seller - bending to hook his hands under her arms as Fenris wordlessly gathers up her legs. Nearby, Aveline scoops up the child, cradling them gently against her armoured chest. “You’ll regret saying that in a day or two.” 

Fenris huffs a soft laugh. His hair is clinging to his dark face, almost silver for the rain. Anders is a little worried that now that he’s noticed how handsome the elf is, he won’t be able to stop. 

With one hand around the grocer’s feet, Fenris pushes open the closest door, and they step inside, laying her body on the ground. In the house, the storm feels abruptly very far away. It’s a small, cosy place, with dried herbs hanging over the kitchen window, and a rough modest wooden table dominating the space in the centre of the room. Anders blinks, and can half imagine he’s ten years old again, in his mother’s kitchen, playing under her feet as she peeled potatoes for their dinner.

The rain patters lightly over the cottage’s roof and windows. Anders pushes his cold, damp hair out of his face, looking at Fenris in the low grey light. “Thank you, again. For everything you did today.”

Fenris looks torn, then, his eyes running over Anders’ face as if he’s searching for an answer there. Anders tries not to shrink under his gaze, and tells himself he imagines it when Fenris’ eyes seem to fall, briefly, to his lips. Fenris clears his throat, and at his side, his hand curls and uncurls with a quiet crunch of metal. Rainwater drips from his fingers onto the wooden floor. Outside, lightning flashes. At last, Fenris speaks, “I would do it again.”

His voice is soft, and steady with the certainty of a promise. Anders blinks, and tries to ignore the way his chest suddenly feels tight. 

“Are you two planning to come back out here and help me, or should I finish by myself?” Aveline’s voice is lightly joking, and she has one farmer slung over her shoulder and another child in her arm as she says it. But her smile falls a little when she looks at Anders. “Seriously, Anders, it’s okay if you need to rest. Fenris and I can handle this.”

Anders shakes away the bright, brittle tension of whatever Fenris’ promise had been making him feel and gives her a wide, crooked grin. “It takes more than ten Tevene charms to stop me, Aveline. I’m a Grey Warden, remember? Our stamina is  _ legendary _ .” He makes sure to waggle his eyebrows to get the maximum effect from his innuendo, and is rewarded when Aveline chuckles and rolls her eyes, stepping into the cottage and gently lowering her cargo onto the wooden floorboards.

Just before he steps outside, Anders sees the tips of Fenris’ ears flush red. 

Perhaps he won’t retire from adventuring just yet.

* * *

Hawke and the others arrive a few hours later - by which point Anders, Fenris and Aveline have made themselves at home in one of the cottages and lit a small fire. They haven’t taken any food - none of them are willing to deprive these people of what little they have. Instead they chew on the rough, salted jerky they’d packed with them for the day, and wait in what is an almost comfortable silence whilst the storm rages outside.

They leave Ser Robert’s body in the middle of the square. 

Dog is the first to find them, coming bounding and barking through the door, which is only marginally wider than it is. Fenris grins at the creature as it comes closer, walking heedlessly over the unconscious bodies on the floor and bumping the furniture with its great heavy body. He reaches out to scratch its head, though he notices the way that beside him Anders tenses a little. He wonders whether there is a reason for that, like their experiences today. It was not unheard of for the templars to use hounds in their search for apostates. 

Oblivious to his train of thought, Dog rewards Fenris’ attentions with a great, rasping lick over his hand, before shaking itself in a snap of skin and fur, showering them with a cloud of droplets that stink like wet dog. The fire sputters, Aveline laughs, and Anders groans. “I  _ hate _ dogs.”

Hawke steps up through the door, black hair clinging to her fair skin, blue eyes bright. Outside the rain falls, thick and heavy in the dark. Fenris thinks he catches a flash of green light, and tries to soothe his own anxiety. It’s only Merrill. She will not hurt him, or any of them. Hawke takes one look at the three of them, haggard and quiet in a kitchen full of unconscious villagers, and gives them a wide crooked grin. “So I’m guessing by the very cranky aristocrat currently yelling at Varric that the mission didn’t go well?”

Anders has his head buried in his arms, which are resting on the table, and his voice is muffled but still clearly sarcastic when he speaks. “You could say that.”

“Right.” Hawke says, brightly. “Well, Merrill and I figured out a different way to break the curse. So how about we wake up Sleepyville and go home, hm?”

Anders gives her a thumbs up without lifting his head. Fenris feels himself grinning, and wonders how it is so much easier to see the mage’s irreverence in a different light, now that he knows the freedom and independence that lies behind it. He scratches the damp, silky ruff around Dog’s great muscular neck before looking up at Hawke, who raises one dark eyebrow at his smile. “Going home sounds like an excellent idea.”

Hawke nods, once, satisfied. “I’m full of those. Alright.” She claps her hands, and Dog turns from Fenris to its master. “Come on, you lot. Lets go put some ugly old Tevinter corpse back in the ground where it belongs.”

* * *

Fenris comes to the clinic three days later. Anders finishes with his final patient and washes his hands before he deals with him, trying to hide his amusement as the elf shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other, watching the clinic’s inhabitants as if they’re all some strange new species of creature he’s never encountered.

Anders dries his hands with a clean cloth, and checks the clinic doors for any more patients before raising his voice. “Surgery is closed for the day. Unless your insides are on the outside, come back in the morning and I’ll treat you then.”

He gets a handful of laughs for that, and a ragged chorus of “Thanks, Healer” and “Night, Healer!” as the few people left slowly trickle out of the doors. Anders crosses the wide earthen space to the entrance, and is a little glad that for once that the room is absent of anyone who needs to stay overnight. He smiles at Fenris as he gets closer, and resists the urge to adjust his hair. 

“Hi Fenris. Give me a moment.” Anders steps past Fenris onto the landing. He feels the cool, mildewed air of Darktown wash over his face with the echoing, distant sounds of the Undercity: shouting, singing, banging, and dogs barking, bouncing off the wooden rafters. Fenris steps back to let him pass, the faintest ghost of a smile curved over his lips as Anders reaches up to put out the lantern in front of his clinic. 

When he’s done, Anders claps off his hands and turns to look up through the broken walls of Darktown at the distant blue line of the sea. He feels something jagged in his chest ease as he does so. He loves his clinic, and the sanctuary he’s built here. But seeing nothing but walls all day could get wearing. It’s good to see the sea. He takes a deep breath, and turns to Fenris. “What do you need?”

Fenris tilts his head to the side then, just a little, and pulls a bottle of wine out of his bag. “I do not need anything. I had hoped we could speak.”

Anders offers him a rueful smile, “I don’t drink.” He waves Fenris into the clinic, before turning and pulling at the wooden door on its rails. The thing is stubborn, and needs to be pulled and lifted at once before it will move. Anders struggles with it for a moment, old wood soft beneath his hands, before it gives with a rattle and a low rumble. Anders shuts the door, and turns, gesturing at the cots and stools around them. “Make yourself at home.”

Fenris stands, awkwardly, for a moment longer, before sitting stiffly on a high stool. His toes don’t quite touch the ground, and he swings his feet like a child, once, before setting them on the stool’s wooden rail. He clears his throat, and sets the bottle down carefully on the cot beside him. “I know you don’t drink. The wine is for me, I brought you this.” He reaches into his pack, then, and pulls out a cloth wrapped bundle that smells richly of game, fennel and cider. 

Anders stares. “Is that -?”

Fenris’ mouth curls into a small, almost shy smile. “One of Mary Appleton’s famous rabbit pies? Yes.” He frowns at the bundle as he unwraps it, to reveal a thick, perfect golden crust. Steam rises up into the air as it’s unwrapped. “I hope that it lives up to its reputation. It was more expensive than I had anticipated.”

Anders is already crossing the clinic to his quarters, fetching a knife, forks and two wooden plates. “It does.” He says, making no effort to hide his excitement. At the back of his head, he can feel Justice’s amusement, touched with something almost like affection. Anders passes Fenris a plate, his fork and the knife. His mouth waters as he watches Fenris cut through the pie’s thick crust, and more steam escapes, smelling richly of cider and herbs. “She gave me one of these after I delivered her boy last autumn.” Fenris hands him a plate, and Anders dips his fork into the pie, skewering a rich, steaming piece of it dripping with thick sauce onto his plate. He grins at Fenris, wide and bright. “I haven’t had rabbit pie this good since I was a kid.”

He shoves the forkful into his mouth, and moans in a way Karl had more than once told him was provocatively obscene. Anders wonders whether it has elicited any kind of reaction from Fenris, and plays with the daydream as he swallows. The taste of rabbit soaked in fennel and cider is rich, sweet and spiced on his tongue. After a long day of hard work, he can’t imagine anything better.

He opens his eyes, and sees Fenris watching him, quiet and steady. Anders feels himself blushing, and turns to the pie on his plate instead of holding his gaze. “Did they serve it in the Circle?”

Fenris’ question is quiet and polite, but sharp with the connotations of everything it holds for both of them. Anders treats it with care, as he slips another mouthful of pie onto his fork. He directs his answer to his plate. “Escape attempt number two. Olivia. Coincidentally, also the first time I had -” Anders looks up then, to see Fenris raising both eyebrows at him, and clears his throat, feeling his blush get hotter and race down the back of his neck. “Well, you had to be there.”

Fenris’ lips twitch into a small smile, and he looks down, “I’m sure.” Carefully, cautiously, he takes his first bite of pie. Anders watches him eagerly as he swallows. Outside the clinic, someone begins to sing into the tunnels - some old Fereldan folk tune. Fenris moves his fork to pick up another bite of pie. Anders stares at him.

“So?”

Fenris shrugs, but there’s still a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. One of his legs swings, freely, under the plate in his lap. “It is good, mage.”

“Good.” Anders repeats, indignantly. “This pie isn’t just good. It’s mind-blowing. It’s sensational. It’s  _ Orlesian _ . Tell me you at least think it was worth the money you paid for it.”

Fenris does smile, then, and looks at him boldly. Anders thinks he can see a faint flush in his dark cheeks. “It would have been worth it for your reaction alone, mage.”

Anders’ face is burning. His hand feels sweaty around his fork. “Oh. Right.” He glares furiously at his pie. The thick, sweet smell of herbs and cider, roasted meat and butter crust fills his mouth. He clears his throat. “So, um. What did you want to talk about?”

Fenris is quiet for a long moment, and Anders takes the opportunity to eat a little more of his pie, letting it warm him as he does so. Outside the clinic, there’s a loud bang of wood on wood as someone slams a door. Fenris’ toes curl around the wooden rail of his stool. “I wanted to talk about what happened the other day, with Ser Robert.” 

Anders stiffens, feeling a little of the merry, foolish flirtatiousness that had been building in him melt away. He had half-hoped that he would get away with never speaking of the whole blighted thing again, like he did with the rest of his past, and other things he wanted to ignore.

_ You must not ignore such things _ , Justice’s voice is deep and insistent at the back of his head. Anders brushes him away, feeling like nothing so much as a mother with a demanding child tugging at her skirts. 

_ I know. Just. Humour me. _

Either oblivious to Anders’ internal struggle or tactful enough not to mention it, Fenris continues, frowning a little at his plate. “I do not mean to ask you to share something private. If you are unwilling to discuss such things, then I understand.” Fenris huffs then, a quiet, bitter thing. “I think I would understand better than most people.” His mouth turns down, and his slender chest rises as he breathes before he looks up. “But I would know you better, mage. If you would let me.”

Anders has spent thirty-seven years begging the people around him to listen when he spoke. He never thought it would be Fenris, of all people, that would hear him. 

He feels Justice’s encouragement, quiet and reassuring in the back of his head. He finishes his pie first, setting down his plate on a nearby table. He can feel Fenris watching him: quietly, patiently, without demand. Anders sighs, and sits forward, looking down at his hands. Absently, he wrings his fingers. “It can actually be a good thing. In the interest of balance.” He looks up and gives Fenris a challenging grin. Fenris huffs, and nods in acknowledgement, taking another bite of his pie.

“Mages in the Circles can be requested by patrons. Those patrons have to be approved by the Chantry, and usually a secular authority - like a monarch or a viscount. But as long as all the right people have signed the right paperwork, mages can leave the Circle. After a fashion.” Anders rubs his chin, feeling the rough scratch of the stubble there. He really needs a shave. “Sometimes it’s temporary. They just,” Anders’ mouth twists, “borrow us for a while - for a specific task or assignment. Like property.” He shakes his head, trying to shake away the memories with it. “Others are permanent. Like, court mage, or advisor. And there are people - mages, I mean - who make it work for them. If you’re good at politics, you can work your way up through a Circle and back out into a position of power you would never have had otherwise. You’ll enjoy wealth, influence, freedom.” Anders can’t keep the wistfulness from his voice as he says the word, though he wishes he could. It makes him feel all too vulnerable, with this man he doesn’t know well, who has only recently begun to consider him kindly. He clears his throat again. “There are some mages who hold more power than even the bannorn, and other nobility.”

“You were not such a mage.” It’s not really a question, and there’s some humour in Fenris’ voice as he sets aside his plate. He picks up the bottle of wine, and Anders’ gets to his feet, glad of an excuse to do something with his hands. He clears away their plates, and fetches Fenris a wooden cup and a corkscrew, setting his own cup on the side before going back to the sink and cleaning their plates. Anders shrugs as he works whilst Fenris opens the wine, heating the water with a little magic and scrubbing away the sauce. 

“I’m no good at politics.”

“You don’t say.” Fenris says, mildly, pouring himself a cup of wine before setting down the bottle. Anders snorts, and sets the plates to dry on the rack.

“Remind me again why I let you in my clinic?”

Fenris bends, picking up the cloth wrapped parcel. “I bought you pie.” Anders takes it reverently, taking it back to the makeshift pantry he’s made at the back of the clinic and wrapping it carefully. 

“You did do that.” He hums. He puts the pie away, and comes back to where he’d been sitting, pouring himself a glass of water as he does so and drinking before he continues. “But I’m a Spirit Healer. That’s rare, and valuable. Not everyone has one. Kinloch had two, actually.” Anders thinks, briefly, wistfully of Wynne. He never thought he’d want her guidance. But he misses it almost daily, now. He continues. “So if another Circle needed one, or if someone in Ferelden did, there we were.” He purses his lips. “Sign on the dotted line.” Anders sighs, then, looking up and past Fenris at the distant earthen wall of his clinic, pockmarked and scarred with age. “And since Wynne  _ was _ good at politics, I always got the shit assignments.”

“I had not thought you ever left the tower’s confines.” Fenris says, quietly. “The way you spoke of it, it sounded like a prison.”

“It was.” Anders says, firmly, feeling Justice rush to agree with him. He waits for Fenris to contradict him, but Fenris only waits, and watches. Anders goes on, “I mostly didn’t. And when I left it was, for a few days? A week, maybe? Always chaperoned. Not everyone is - but with my proclivity for escape attempts…” Anders grins without humour, and Fenris doesn’t smile back. He lets the expression fall as he sighs, feeling something like exhaustion settling over his bones. He shrugs. “I’d get sent off to help Lord or Lady What’s-Their-Face with some magical problem, or a disease, or a doomed trip up a mountain, and I’d do it if I could, or not if I couldn’t, and then they’d take me back.” He swallows, thinking bitterly of every time he’d passed back through Kinloch’s great doors, and heard them swing shut behind him. “Honestly, sometimes it was worse than just staying in the tower until you forgot what the sun felt like. It was -” Anders stops, trying to find the words.

“Better not to have it, than to have it taken away.” Fenris offers, gaze dark with the familiarity of experience. Anders feels a lump rise thick and painful in his throat. He raises a hand, and gestures to the candles on the tables beside them.

“Do you mind?” He wouldn’t normally ask. It’s not a need for permission, so much, as a desire to make Fenris comfortable. He finds unexpected magic frightening. So Anders asks. Fenris looks at him, and his eyes are light and green, beautiful and unreadable. After a moment he nods. Anders waves his hand, feeling the faint flush of his connection with the Fade opening a little. The candles light, and dance in the faint breeze of the Undercity, shedding golden light over the dirt and wooden walls. Fenris drinks a little more of his wine. The smell of it is rich and sweet, winding with the pie over the more familiar scent of soap and bitter medicinal herbs.

Once he’s drunk, Fenris sets down his cup. “Was it always like that?” 

Anders looks away from him, towards the doors. A loud group of drunks marches past the stairs. Anders wonders how early they’d started. He shrugs. “Worse, usually.” He rubs the back of his neck, and tries to offer Fenris a smile. He tries to ignore the way this is pulling at a wound in his chest he thought had long since scarred. “I mean. I actually was in the Circle back then. They had my phylactery. And Irving wasn’t likely to make me Tranquil, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t a real threat.” Anders wets his lips, and looks at his hands. “That, and other things.” He remembers being in the dark so long he forgot what the sun looked like. He wrings his hands hard enough to hurt. 

“I had not imagined such things.” Fenris confesses, after a moment. “In Tevinter, of course, it is...inconceivable. The very suggestion that a mage would be treated in such a way -” His mouth twists, “except slaves, of course.” Of course. Anders tries to imagine what it would be like, to be enslaved as a mage in Tevinter. His mind skitters away from the vision with which it presents him. 

Fenris picks up his cup, and looks into it as he swirls it lightly in his hand. “I had thought -” He huffs, bitter and mirthless, and reaches up with one hand to tug it back through his hair. Anders realises abruptly that he isn’t wearing his gauntlets. His hands are rough and dark and wound with lyrium. “I had  _ hoped _ that the rest of Thedas would not be so...corrupt.”

Anders laughs. He can’t help it, and he regrets it a little when Fenris’ head jerks up, angry colour blooming on his cheeks. Anders waves him off. “No, sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just. Yeah. People are awful, turns out.” He waves his hands. “Surprise.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Maker, it’s hard to imagine anyone seeing the Free Marches as a place without corruption.”

Fenris drinks. Next to him, the candle sheds golden, dancing light over the fine, handsome lines of his face. “I could say the same of Tevinter.”

Far off, a child squeals in the tunnels as a hound barks, loud and echoing in the night. Very, very softly, there’s the distant crash of the sea. Anders drags his hand over the back of his neck and down his collarbone, giving Fenris a rueful smile as he makes an effort to swallow his pride. “I sort of made the Imperium into this perfect fantasy where mages were free and I could do whatever I wanted.” He frowns. “I never thought too hard about the slaves.”

“No one ever does.” Fenris points out, dryly, finishing his wine before he pours himself another cup. He drinks again before he speaks, and Anders fidgets as he waits. “I saw a great deal of myself in you, the other day, with Ser Robert. I know what it is like, to be treated in that way. It was...disturbing, to see you subjected to such treatment.”

“No one should be.” Anders says, firmly, trying not to think of casual violence, and rough laughing men who insisted he reminded them of their wives. 

Fenris nods once, short and sharp. “On this we agree.”

Anders feels himself start to smile then, honest and laughing and more than a little admiring. “Fenris.” Anders lets his voice lilt as he teases the man in front of him, leaning forward and lifting his chin, shaking his hair back over his shoulder as he does so. “Is this the first time we’ve spoken without disagreement?”

Fenris raises one elegant eyebrow at him. “Do not push your luck, mage.” The tips of his ears are red. Anders lets his smile fall, but his lips twitch. And then Fenris sets down his cup again and looks at him, quiet and serious. “And in answer to your question, no. That was three days ago, when I realised that we may not be so very different after all.”

He gets to his feet then, lightly, and Anders feels something like disappointment growing in his chest as he does so. He gets up too, and notices with something like humour and something like interest that he easily has a head in height on the elf beside him. Fenris turns, pushing the cork back into his wine bottle before carefully setting it back into his pack. Anders tries to smile at him, and fall back onto something of the flirtatious mask of his youth. He’s not entirely joking when he asks, as lightly as he can, “Bored of me already?”

Fenris shakes his head and rolls his shoulders, and Anders catches the tension in his body now, and the way he winces a little as he moves. “No. I am tired, and these markings...trouble me.” He frowns down at his hand, then lowers it, looking back up to meet Anders’ eyes. “Hawke has need of me in the morning. Thank you, mage. This was a pleasant evening and I appreciate your honesty. I know it is not always easy to grant it.” He turns to walk away.

“I could make you a potion.” Anders offers, feeling the words pull free of him before he has a chance to think them through. Fenris looks surprised, and Anders adds, by way of explanation, “For your tattoos. I mean. If you let me examine them I’d be able to make something better.” Fenris scowls, and Anders raises his hands in a gesture of appeasement. “But I can do palliative without that. Just for the pain.”

Fenris seems to consider that, for a moment, before he nods once, slowly. “That would be...very kind. Thank you.” Both of them stiffen when there’s the sudden sound of metal on metal, and the distinctive clash of a brawl. But it’s not close by, and it doesn’t seem to be coming closer. After a moment, they relax.

Anders tries to ease the sudden tension in the air between them. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, I owe you one.”

Fenris frowns. “You owe me nothing.” He says it firmly, and Anders tries not to let it make him smile, and feels a pleased kind of warmth spreading through his chest all the same. Fenris turns, and opens the doors onto Darktown with a soft rattle. The breeze rushes in, smelling of ratshit and chokedamp. Fenris wrinkles his nose, and Anders grins at him, taking a great, exaggerated breath.

“Ah, home sweet home.” He grins at Fenris, widely. “ _ Still _ better than the Circle.”

Fenris’ mouth twitches, “I’ll take your word for it.” He turns and looks away into the dark. In the low light, the white of his hair almost glows. Anders watches him, standing on the threshold to his home. After a moment, Fenris looks back at him. “Anders?”

Far away, there’s the distant sound of the sea. “Yes?” Anders tries to ignore the way his heart is pounding, suddenly. Since when did Fenris have this effect on him? (Since he had stood between him and Ser Robert, part of him murmurs. Since he had protected him, as so few people ever had. Since he had made an effort to be kind.)

Fenris looks at him, and then away. It’s hard to tell in the low light, but Anders thinks he might be blushing. Fenris’ hand tightens around the strap of his pack. “You are many things. But you are never boring.”

Then he turns, and walks quickly away. He doesn’t look back. Anders stares after him for a moment, feeling his heart thudding against his chest. Then he leans against the doorframe, and watches him go, raising a hand and calling after him into the dark. “Good night!” He thinks he sees a lyrium wrapped hand raised in the darkness in half a wave, as Fenris ascends the second staircase. Then he turns a corner, and disappears. 

Anders sighs, and rests his hip against the doorframe, taking his weight off his bad knee with practiced habit. Fenris really was handsome, when he wasn’t spewing bigoted nonsense. And all at once, Anders had hopes on the bigoted nonsense front. 

At the back of his head, Justice shifts, uneasily.  _ This is a distraction, Anders _ .

Anders rolls his eyes, and straightens, shutting the door and locking it.  _ Shut up, Justice. _

Then he blows out the candles.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! This fic started as a late night conversation between muirgen_lys and I and sort of, developed a life of its own. 
> 
> I really hope you enjoyed the story!! If you ever want to say hi to me on tumblr, I'm always happy to chat fenders and DA - my blog is [@lesetoilesfous](https://lesetoilesfous.tumblr.com/)
> 
> And don't forget to check out [muirgen_lys' writing ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muirgen_lys/works) too!!


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